TV remote among the greatest of ideas

With all due respect to Eli Whitney, Edison and the Wright Brothers, I'd pick Eugene Polley as the greatest American inventor of all time.

So what did he invent, you may be asking. The remote control for your TV, that's what, and therefore the inventor of the mute button.

Whitney has gotten a lot of ink over the years for coming up with the cotton gin. The what? He didn't even invent gin, which might have earned him some real bragging rights, given the popularity of the dry martini.. But no, he didn't even invent vermouth. So what makes him such a genius?

Edison? Sure, the electric light is nothing to sneeze at, and I try to remember to thank him every time I leave my bed at night to grope my way into the bathroom. Even the little night light that helps me navigate that nocturnal voyage without breaking my fool neck is surely a spin-off of the bulb that first burned in the brain of the Wizard of Menlo Park. So, certainly, he's in the running.

Orville and Wilbur? Yes, airplanes are amazing things, but I seem to remember reading not long ago that a Connecticut pioneer may have made the first-ever flight right here in New England a good two years before the famous take-off from Kitty Hawk, which, of course, has a far more imaginative name.

That gets me back to Eugene Polley. Yes, Polley, not Eugene Pallette, the obese, bassoon-voiced old character actor we often saw in both movies of a double feature in the Saturday afternoons of our middle teens.

Polley came up with his remarkable invention while working as an engineer for Zenith back in the 1950s. He called it "Flash-Matic tuning," and it featured a green ray-gun with a red trigger. Press the trigger and it changed the channels without a viewer having to get up, walk across the room and turn a knob on the set. Presto chango. How great was that? Well, you had to be there.

I hate to guess how many total miles we may have walked, just in our own dens and living rooms, before Polley's little brainchild was unveiled. I'll tell you one thing: Nobody referred to it as "Polley's Folly," the way they did Fulton's steamboat or Seward's purchase of Alaska.

Not only did the TV remote breed generations of couch potatoes like me, it did wonders for the sale of living-room recliners. Now you could lie back in comfort and direct the family's entertainment with the click of a button.

Magazine ads pictured a viewer pointing a ray gun at a Zenith with this headline: "A flash of magic light from across the room (no wires, no cords) turns set on, off or changes channels -- and you remain in your easy chair!"

"You can also shut off long, annoying commercials while picture remains on screen!" the ad went on.

That's where the mute button came into the picture, liberating generations of us from loud, long, dumb, silly, misleading, and even deceptive commercials, especially in political advertising, the worst of them all.

Think also what it has meant for domestic relations in America. For every divorce caused by marriage partners fighting over control of the remote, three probably have been saved by couples united in their need to blank out offensive commercials.

So Polley for greatest inventor of them all. Or at least put his face on the dollar bill.